Raymond Ozzie

Ray Ozzie was formerly best known for his role in creating Lotus Notes. He received his bachelor’s degree in computer science in 1979 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he worked on the PLATO system. He began his career at Data General Corporation where he worked for Jonathan Sachs. Ozzie then worked at Software Arts and was later recruited by Sachs and Mitch Kapor to work for Lotus Development to develop what became Lotus Symphony.

After leaving Lotus Development in 1984 he founded Iris Associates to create the product later sold by Lotus as Lotus Notes. Iris Associates was acquired by Lotus in 1994, while Lotus itself was acquired by IBM in 1995. Ozzie continued working there for several years before leaving to form Groove Networks which was acquired by Microsoft in 2005.

Ozzie became one of three Chief Technical Officers and in 2006, he took over the role of Chief Software Architect from Bill Gates. More recently, in founding Blues Wireless, he has been focusing on creating the infrastructure for digital transformation - connecting billions of commercial products to the cloud."

On receiving his award Ray Ozzie said: "It is a great honour to receive this award. I have been very fortunate to have worked with and learned from many talented entrepreneurs and leaders over the years. The computing and communications sectors remain ripe for innovation, and I hope that my work might also inspire others."